Conventions

The conventions used in this chapter are as follows:

•	All publicly available VA Smalltalk functions and macros are prefixed with Es. This prevents name conflicts with user-developed code that is linked with a VA Smalltalk virtual machine.

•	The terms byte, word, and long refer to 8-, 16-, and 32-bit quantities, respectively.

•	C language code in text is in the example font, while Smalltalk code is in italics.

•	All function descriptions are in C and have the following form:

returnType functionName(type arg1, type arg2, ...)

The text that follows the function description is an explanation of the function, its parameters, and return values. Following the explanation appear paragraphs like this:

Error cases: This paragraph describes error conditions, if any, and any assumptions made about parameters.

Smalltalk equivalent: This shows the equivalent operation in Smalltalk, if any.

Side effects: This describes any side effects the function might have.

This format is used to describe everything, even though some of the functions are actually implemented as macros. You can see examples of this presentation format in Functions available in user primitives.